I went through our CRM and saw that the rest of the team wasn’t using it. I wasn’t even the manager. I was a sales rep who just wanted to know if someone was already working a prospect I found.

Someone had put the contact information into the CRM … but left no notes. Did they have a call? Did they email the buyer? If they did, what did they talk about? To make it worse, this colleague was on vacation, so I couldn’t call to ask.

This happened over and over again. I’d find a prospect, but realize they were already in the CRM, with no notes.

CRM usage wasn’t my problem. It was my manager’s responsibility to make everyone use the CRM. I knew she was 10 times as frustrated as I was about our team not properly inputting data.

Unsurprisingly, my old team wasn’t the only one having this problem (plus dozens more). Through a survey of over 700 sales professionals, we found the biggest challenges sales teams face.

Understanding is temporal and changes whenever you gain new information, experience or shift your vantage point.

To quote Heraclitus, “No man steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

The daily grind often makes it difficult to look back on lessons learned in the workplace. Time is in short supply, but carving out a small block of it to reflect is important—the best people I’ve worked with frequently weigh the work they’re doing and the person they’re bringing to work.

1. A little stress is a good thing.

The best kind of stress? Urgency. Feeling hurried is invigorating and drives you toward the finish line. You want to hold tight to a sense of haste without losing the headspace needed for strategy and forward thinking. After all, even the broadest shoulders can’t bear the burden of constant anxiety for long.

2. Leadership isn’t just for appointed leaders.

Think of a time in your career when a project went sour. The response that stayed with you probably came from the person who made the first move, took ownership, and rallied everyone toward a better outcome.

Even if the conversation is hard, even when discussing your current shortcomings or failings, you always leave with sights set high and the belief you can get it done.

3. You are the easiest person to fool.

It takes awareness to always share the unblemished truth, but you must keep stubborn standards: no one executes well without a firm grip on reality. Remember, it’s the seemingly innocuous, almost “positive” white lies (“Um, looks great!”) that most often sneak in and warp fact.

4. Grade your work as a whole, not as an outcome.

Since the days of cave paintings, and probably before that, creative people have tried to judge their own work.

5. A failure to communicate is your failure.

The job of communication is, in the words of author Neal Stephenson, “to condense fact from the vapor of nuance.” The burden of understanding is on you, not your audience.

As author André Gide put it, “Everything’s already been said, but since nobody was listening, we have to start again.”

6. Feedback is an outcome-oriented activity.

I’ve always favored the term “necessarily honest” over “brutally honest,” because feedback is instructive language given to positively influence behavior. Feedback should be as blunt as it needs to be to incite change, and no more. Even brutally honest feedback is about being honest; it’s never about being brutal.

7. Energy + focus = productivity.

Period. Throw out every productivity app you have and learn to get a good night’s sleep instead. Then remove distractions. It really is that simple, but simple doesn’t mean easy. Although it’s been said many times in many different ways, author Maria Edgeworth penned my favorite variation: “If we take care of the minutes, the years will take care of themselves.”

8. Research should seek truth, not validation.

The purpose of learning—whether through research, debate, or any other means—is to arrive at the truth.

9. Better judgement tends to show up late.

The worst regret is dealing with an eternity wrought from a hot-headed decision. H.G. Wells may have been asking too much when he said to wait for the common sense of the morning, but at the very least, have the patience to give it five minutes. What seems “right” in the heat of the moment often feels foolish once your good sense has had time to catch up.

It’s time to make use of applications, not just let them be those annoying images on your desktop. The right applications can create efficiencies for your business.

Get techy or go home! Check out this great read on apps for small businesses. Adilas takes care of over half the needs on this list, and is my preferred tool – but hey, tripit and joinme are cool new apps worth checking out!

Over the past few years, the number of cloud-based applications that can help you run and grow your business more effectively has exploded. Whether you access them via your desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile device, they can help you plan and complete tasks more quickly, effectively and profitably.

Big Data is the new IT buzzword. Companies are spending on Big Data, but how do they use it to make better decisions, work more productively and take better actions? How does a company go from spending on big data to making it a competitive advantage for their business?